Even if Obama thought first — or even only — about reelection, how could he have chosen to lie the way he did about Libya?

Mark Steyn writes:

The State Department has now conceded that there was no movie protest at all. and that it was, in fact, one of the most sophisticated military attacks ever launched at a diplomatic facilityBoth these very obvious points were surely known to Washington by 6 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday September 12, by which time the surviving consulate staff had been evacuated to Tripoli. Yet Ambassador Rice, President Obama, et al., were still blaming the video days later. Obama and Secretary Clinton always refer to Ambassador Stevens as “Chris” — Chris this, Chris that — as if he were a treasured friend or intimate. Yet they and the sad hollow men around them dishonor their “friend” in death.

Quite aside from the wrongness of lying, generally and specifically, in this case, and quite aside from the motivation to lie — I'm going to presume, without more, it was campaign politics — why did Obama think he could get away with this lie long enough, and why was he not daunted by the risk entailed in going on and on, doubling down on the lie, and even lying in a U.N. speech? How did he have the nerve to co-opt our U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, and subvert her credibility and honor? How did he get this millstone around the neck of Hillary Clinton, who has such a strong interest in her independent career and who knows a thing or two about the devastation of getting caught lying? (And this lie can't be waved away as as lie "about sex." It's a lie at the very heart of our trust in the President.)

Now, I have a few more questions, focusing on the choice to construct the lie out of that "Innocence of Muslims" video. Here's a montage of statements that were made about the video:

OBAMA:  I don't care how offensive this video was, it was terribly offensive and we should shun it.

HILLARY:  This video is disgusting and reprehensible.  It appears to have a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion and to provoke rage.

CARNEY:  Let's be clear.  These protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.

OBAMA:  You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character, an extremely offensive video.

CARNEY:  The unrest we've seen has been in reaction to a video.

OBAMA:  A crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.

RICE:  It was a spontaneous, not a premeditated response, a direct result of a heinous and offensive video.

OBAMA:  I know there are some who ask, "Why don't we just ban such a video?"  The answer is enshrined in our laws.  Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

Was this just the nearest lame excuse, like the dog ate my homework? The President must have known that the truth about the attack on the embassy would eventually emerge. He couldn't have assumed that those called to testify in congressional hearings would commit perjury. Even if everyone would be willing to commit perjury, how could they think they could credibly pull off lies about protests — vivid public events — that never took place? Maybe Obama's only concern was that the truth not emerge before the election, but given the risk that it would, why wasn't he afraid of how bizarre and outrageous the video story was?

The video story, moreover, put Obama in a position where he had to present caring for the feelings of violent foreigners as something that challenges our commitment to free speech, as if it were a difficult matter to brood over. He made it sound as though he would ban the video — or take the proposal to ban it seriously — if only the Constitution didn't stand in his way. Was he interested in making a show of respect for constitutional law? It didn't come off as too respectful, especially when they arrested the filmmaker (who was, conveniently, on parole and thus arrestable). This was the worst sort of scapegoating. Obama called this man — this erstwhile nonentity — "a shadowy character."

And this inane and unnecessary display of concern for the feelings of Muslims depended on thinking about Muslims as a bunch of idiots and criminals. It wasn't respectful at all to promote this caricature of Muslims as people who look at a stupid video and lose their minds, take to the streets, and work themselves up into a murderous rage. The video story could only work as a cover for the truth if it could be leveraged on an offensive stereotype of Muslims. It is the story about the response to the video — far more the video itself — that has "a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion"! Why didn't Obama care that he was insulting Muslims in this weird charade about caring for Muslims?

Why was any of this worth doing, even cynically? Even if you assume Obama put his own reelection first, how could he possibly have selected this lie and thought it was a good idea? Yes, the planned terrorist attack in Libya hurts the image he would like to have as the vanquisher of al Qaeda, but the truth about that has already come out, with 3 weeks left to go before the election. By handling the matter the way he did, we have — on top of the damage to the vanquisher of al Qaeda image — a glaring lie and plain evidence of extremely poor judgment.

"The official line — that the slaughter of American officials was some sort of improvised movie review that got a little out of hand..."

"...  is now in the process of modification to something bearing a less patently absurd relationship to what actually happened. That should not make any more forgivable the grotesque damage that the administration has done to the bedrock principle of civilized society: freedom of speech."

Writes Mark Steyn.

"So, on a highly symbolic date, mobs storm American diplomatic facilities and drag the corpse of a U.S. ambassador through the streets."

"Then the president flies to Vegas for a fundraiser. No, no, a novelist would say; that's too pat, too neat in its symbolic contrast.... Too crude, too telling, too devastating."

"I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that's the America millions of Americans believe in."

"That's the America I love."

Said Mitt Romney according to Doonesbury, which made fun of it, and Language Log's Geoffrey K. Pullum was initially inclined to mock, and then thought about it, and realized he agreed with it.

One thing that gave him second thoughts is that his co-blogger Mark Liberman had already processed the quote, using the sublime technique of sentence diagramming. Which is nice.

But the more important basis for second thinking is that when you get to Liberman's old post, you find out that Romney didn't even speak those words. Mark Steyn did, and he was purporting to paraphrase Romney, for humorous effect. Pullum found out he was laughing at Steyn and Steyn was trying to make us laugh, and suddenly the quote wasn't funny anymore. Pullum, the liberal, was initially enjoying laughing at Romney — and his vapid dorkiness — and then he found out he was laughing at something a big right-winger — Steyn — had intended as a joke. Hey, that's not funny!

Pullum regains his sense of self-liberalism and goes into 4th of July mode:

It's nearly the 4th of July.... I love being back in America. It's like slipping into an old pair of shoes that really fit.... I don't think I can find anything mistaken in the passage. I think I believe in that America too. God bless it, anyway.

His post ends with a note that it's completely rewritten, because he apparently had originally assumed Romney did say those words, hadn't seen Liberman's old post, and went the mockery.

"So what happened to all those candidates embodying the spirit of Egypt’s modern progressive democratic youth movement..."

"... that all those Western media rubes were cooing over in Tahrir Square a year ago? How are they doing in Egypt’s first free presidential election?"

Why would Obama pretend to have been born in Kenya?

I asked this question the other day, when Breitbart broke the news of that literary agent's brochure that said Obama was born in Kenya. I said:

Where's the advantage in being seen as African African? It certainly isn't a way to get affirmative action from law school admissions and appointments committees. They may crudely care mainly about the way their classrooms look and take advantage of African African applicants, but the theories of affirmative action (especially the legal ones) have to do with black people who come from the American culture with its history of discrimination, prejudice, and disadvantage.

Mark Steyn has a good answer: Obama had reason not to want to be seen as having been born in Hawaii:

After all, if your first book is an exploration of racial identity and has the working title “Journeys in Black and White,” being born in Hawaii doesn’t really help. It’s entirely irrelevant to the twin pillars of contemporary black grievance — American slavery and European imperialism. To 99.99 percent of people, Hawaii is a luxury-vacation destination and nothing else. Whereas Kenya puts you at the heart of what, in an otherwise notably orderly decolonization process by the British, was a bitter and violent struggle against the white man’s rule. Cool! The composite chicks dig it, and the literary agents.

That reminds me of what Rush Limbaugh said yesterday: "Maybe this business he was born in Kenya, maybe it was just compression, you know, like his girlfriend in the book.  Maybe he was just writing it himself as a composite." But Rush's bigger point was:

If you're Barack Obama, wouldn't you rather... people get all absorbed and sidetracked on some blurb in a literary pitch years and years ago?  I can see Obama and his boys sitting in the White House saying, "You know, let's have some fun with the birthers. Let's go ahead and release this thing...." 

"But don’t worry, Harvard Law School racked up their identity-group bonus points on the basis of the authoritative evidence of Ms Warren’s family 'lore'..."

"... which surely ought to be good enough for faculty-lounge affirmative-action credits."

Mark Steyn aptly notes.

We were talking about this yesterday, and tmitsss reminded us of the "Dear Prudence" column that we were talking about a couple weeks ago. You remember, the Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe got a question from a student who wondered whether it was ethical to accept a scholarship that was available only to Hispanic students when, in fact, he had recently learned that he had no Hispanic ancestors. (He was adopted and had a Hispanic surname.)

Yoffe told him:

There is one essential criteria people must meet in order to be considered Hispanic by the U.S. Census Bureau: That’s what they say they are. 

Your say-so makes it so. And there's money in it!

You were raised by a Hispanic father and have his last name. For most of your life you identified yourself as Hispanic. 

So family "lore" is good enough!

On your behalf the “Hispanic” box was checked on the relevant forms. If you want to shed your Hispanic identity, of course you are free to do so. But given your last name, people will still assume that's what you are, even if you are no longer checking the appropriate boxes. This Pew Hispanic Center report shows just how squishy and variable the term “Hispanic” is. I’m confident your college is thrilled to include you in their count of Hispanic students and doesn’t really want to know you may be thinking of yourself as Armenian. 

Your college is thrilled. You and the college, benefiting together... and who is harmed by this thrilling fantasy... this mutual stimulation to self-pleasure....? Let the frottage continue!

Given the price of tuition, a substantial scholarship is a blessing and you should claim it with equanimity.

Claim your blessings! Everybody wins! Not a loser in sight. Ah! Beautiful!

UPDATE: Yoffe links to this post and makes an offensive, inaccurate statement about it.

This is the most disturbing thing I've read in a long time.

A big quote over at Instapundit. Click on the link. Oh! It's Mark Steyn. He's always predicting the end of the world. I feel better now.

Not really.

"He appears to be part of the new generation of Islamic terrorists who act alone..."

"... abetted by jihadi Web sites and their own anger."

Compare to:

"Don’t worry, folks, he’s just a lone wolf like Major Hasan and Faisal Shahzad and all the other card-carrying members of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves. All jihad is local."

Mark Steyn on Newt Gingrich: "It’s all ‘profoundly, dramatically deeply compelling.'"

"All the action is in the adverbs. One of my problems again with Newt is like he’s bursting with ideas that sound all as if they are coming from a self-help manual. If you remember back in his [heyday], he had something called 'The Triangle of American Progress.' And that evolved into the 'Four Pillars of American Civilization,’ which in turn expanded into the ‘Five Pillars of the Twenty-First Century.'"

Audio here.

ADDED: The bracketed "heyday" above replaces the Daily Caller's "hay day." Did you think someone's "heyday" had something to do with hay? Were you picturing something like this:



No! You are wrong:

heyday
late 16c., alteration of heyda (1520s), exclamation of playfulness or surprise, something like Mod.Eng. hurrah, apparently an extended form of M.E. interjection hey or hei (see hey). Modern sense of "stage of greatest vigor" first recorded 1751, which altered the spelling on model of day, with which this word apparently has no etymological connection.

"Just for the record, Jonah Goldberg, Mark Krikorian, John Derbyshire and I are all 23-year old lesbians."

Says Mark Steyn, implying something about his "serious moobage."

"It would be like Charlie Sheen confessing that it was a body-double under the bevy of hookers and suitcase of coke."

Mark Steyn contemplates my Weiner theory.

"In the absence of cultural confidence at home, we are sending the message that the bedrock principles..."

"... of free, pluralist societies will bend and crumble in a vain race to keep up with the ever touchier sensitivities of the perpetually aggrieved."

50% of NYC residents oppose the mosque near Ground Zero, and only 35% support it.

This NYT poll undermines the belief that the attitude toward the mosque is quite different in New York City and those of us who don't live there don't understand. Here, for example, is a comment written in an August 2d thread on this blog:

Do you live there Ann? No. So its actually none of your business. So you should just shut up about it.

I however, DO vote in that district. I own property in that district. That is MY community board. And I wholeheartedly support that mosque. The vast majority of those in that district support the mosque. And there is another mosque just one block away.

And it is not the Ground Zero Mosque. You can't even see the mosque from Ground Zero.

There was zero controversy about this mosque until the bigots made a stink about this. And yes, you're siding with the bigots now.

Obviously you no zilch about New York City. You have no connections to New York City. You are not a voter in New York City.

This mosque is trying to build bridges with the community. That means community board #1, who support this.

It certain does not mean YOU or Sarah Palin's "fake America".

So the bigots should just mind their own business.

Muslims in Community Board #1 have the right to pray in their neighborhood.

On the other hand, this commenter (downtownlad) can say the poll supports his position. If you break out Manhattan, 51% support the mosque and 41% oppose it.

***

And while we're on the subject of the mosque, did you hear Mark Steyn on the subject (as he was guest-hosting on the Rush Limbaugh show yesterday)? I can't find a transcript or long enough audio clip. He doesn't so much care about building the mosque. He's more concerned with the failure to rebuild on the WTC site and where Imam Rauf gets his money. Perhaps opposition to the mosque is displaced disappointment with America's failure to demonstrate its strength and its values with a dramatic, finished, brilliant architectural achievement that dominates lower Manhattan. It's been 10 years.

"'Krush' (Karl-as-Rush) was the palest simulacrum of a Rush Limbaugh."

Writes Tunku Varadarajan about Rove's guest-hosting on yesterday's show.

Oh, but no one can step in and imitate Rush. With the exception of Mark Steyn, all of Rush's guest-hosts mostly make you think about how much better Rush is and: When is Rush coming back? (Steyn does his own thing, and it's brilliant. I prefer him to Rush.)

It would have been foolish for Rove to go all bombastic and over-confident on his first radio show, so Varadarajan's criticism is lame:

Rove, by comparison [to Rush], is a lightweight. What we learned today is that he does not have the voice for radio. By that I mean not just that his timbre is too thin, his tenor too brittle, but also that he has little oratorical or rhetorical structure, and no apparent ability to cast a spell over listeners. 

Ha. He's from Austin, Texas. He sounds like a character from the movie "Slacker." I found that charming ... disarming. Rush gets a lot of his oratorical power from his self-conception as an outsider — actively excluded from the power-elite in Washington. Rove is the opposite — so self-restraint is good.

Reading his weekly column in The Wall Street Journal, one was already aware of the modesty of his mind. In fact, his column has done much to baffle many Americans: How on earth did this man become the dark genius of the liberal imagination? Listening to him riff on the radio, one was filled with retrospective alarm: Was this the mastermind in the Bush White House?

Oh, Tunku! Do you really imagine the President, in his confidential, private conversations, listening to a Limbaugh-like blowhard overwhelming him with a big rant? Try to imagine why Rove's style works in the context in which he was highly successful. Gentleness and friendly, quiet, sound advice... is it really such a puzzle?

Wow, the Canadians are really helping Ann Coulter with her PR!

"This has never, ever, ever happened before — even at the stupidest American university. . . . Since I’ve arrived in Canada, I’ve been denounced on the floor of Parliament — which, by the way, is on my bucket list — my posters have been banned, I’ve been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council. So welcome to Canada!"

Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant testify about the completely out-of-control pursuit of hate speech in Canada.

I won't attempt to summarize. Listen to the testimony before Parliament's Justice and Human Rights Committee. What has gone on in Canada is truly revolting. The procedural abuses are astounding, and to think that it was all done for a goal that is itself illegitimate — crushing offensive speech.

ADDED: Steyn:

Why is this relevant to Americans? Because the superficial fluffily benign language of multiculturalism that comes so naturally to our rulers provides a lot of cover for the shriveling of free speech....

As Canadians have discovered, liberty is lost very quietly and quickly. And trying to get it back is slow and painful — particularly at a time when artists, universities, publishers, and others who congratulate themselves incessantly on their truth-telling courage find increasingly pre-emptive self-censorship the better part of valor.

"I feel your pain. And have you ever seen The Wizard of Oz?"

"It’s about this sweet little nobody who gets to pay a brief visit to the glittering Emerald City before being swept back to the reassuring familiarity of the poor thing’s broken-down windswept economically devastated monochrome dustbowl. You’ll love it!"

"Spousal murder is not unusual. Beheading your wife is."

"If Muzzammil Hassan decapitated his as an Islamic ritual, then his entire professional life — Mister Moderate Muslim — was a lie. In other words, it would be the work of moments for even the laziest hack to work up exactly the same 'hypocrisy' angle that the press stampede after when some evangelical preacher turns out to have a thing for fetching young rent boys."

The Ricardo Montalban/al Qaeda connection.

"Baby, It's Cold Outside."